Systemic

Systemic means affecting most or all of a system rather than a small portion of the system.

In medicine, systemic means affecting the entire body, rather than a single organ or body part. In systems thinking, systemic means arising from the structure of the system and affecting the general behavior of the entire system. In social problems, systemic means originating from the structure of the system in such a manner as to affect the behavior of most or all social agents of certain types, as opposed to originating from individual agents. The last of these definitions it the one that applies the most to the sustainability problem.

Why this is important

From the definition we see that a problem is systemic if the behavior of most or all of its important social agents is affected. The sustainability problem is clearly a systemic problem.

Systemic problems arise from the structure of the system. Since the sustainability problem is a systemic system, its solution requires deep systemic change to the fundamental layer of the system's structure. This differs radically from popular solutions, which because they don't go deep enough are superficial solutions. The guiding principle is:

Systemic problems require systemic solutions.

Systemic solutions resolve root causes. A systemic solution is the same thing as a root cause solution. Systemic solutions change the fundamental way a system works by changing the structure of its key feedback loops.

Another reason why this is important

Years ago the Wikipedia entry on sustainability was short. (It’s since tripled in size.) It began with this paragraph. Note the fourth word:

Sustainability is a systemic concept, relating to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in a very long term. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet.

Systemic thinking is a rare but learnable skill. Since most people can’t think systemically they can’t handle defining sustainability as a “systemic concept.” That’s why the above entry, after thousands of edits by “helpful” contributors, got watered down to this first paragraph, copied on June 25, 2011:

Sustainability is sometimes known as the capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. For humans, sustainability is the potential for long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions.

The first definition arose from the viewpoint of systems thinking. It’s not a popular definition. But it is a deeper more useful and correct definition.

The second definition reflects popular thinking. It’s therefore superficial. The “capacity to endure” is terribly ambiguous. If a system has the capacity to endure but it’s not used, is the system sustainable? If population collapses due to overshoot, the human system and the biosphere both still exist. They have endured. Is that sustainable? And so on. The second, third, and fourth sentences try to clear up this confusion but fail. “Sustainability is the potential for…” Well, the potential is there today. We could be sustainable if we wanted to but we’re not. Since sustainability is defined as “the potential,” then according to the definition the world is already sustainable.

A shallow incorrect definition might seem an obstacle to using the definition as a starting point for understanding and solving the problem, but this popular definition of sustainability (like so many others) is not designed for that. It is feel good environmentalism designed to please as many people as possible and make them think they understand what sustainability means. That it does. But it does not encourage the correct thinking needed for solution.

In systems engineering the goal state of a system is the preferred state, as opposed to the undesired present state. A problem is defined as the difference between the present and goal state, plus constraints. When a system moves from its present state to the goal state a problem is considered solved.

The second definition contains no description of the goal state, so there’s no way to determine what “the capacity to endure” really means. It tries with “long-term maintenance of well being,” but “well being” is too vague to be useful. What if “well being” conflicts with environmental sustainability? It doesn’t say.

By contrast, the first definition clearly describes the goal state. It’s where “society, its members and its economies are able to….”

The current paradigm of environmentalism is reflected in the second definition. The definition is weak and ineffective because it's a mishmash of a little of everything that’s popular, using everyday thinking.

Where environmentalism needs to be is reflected in the first definition. It starts by elevating one’s thinking to seeing that “sustainability is a systemic concept.” It doesn’t stumble around from there. Instead it classifies the system (human society and the non-human environment) into four subsystems: economic, social, institutional, and environmental. Then it continues thinking systemically by talking about configuring the system so that it can be sustainable. The goal state is clearly described. The definition is loaded with rich and correct content. It sets up the reader for understanding how to go about solving the problem by changing the system.

Systemic is the level of thinking on which activists need to operate. Systemic thinking, better known as systems thinking, is not an easy level to reach. But once you arrive there’s no turning back because it’s so productive.

Since the central problem of environmentalism is a complex system problem, the field must move to a process for thinking systemically, as well as systematically. That’s what the System Improvement Process provides.

Application example

The terrorist insurgency in Afghanistan is a classic systemic problem. Nearly all the population is affected. Most are sympathizers due to long tradition, cultural norms, and a long history of repressive occupation.

This document on Dynamic Planning for COIN in Afghanistan presents on page 22 a model of the problem and possible solutions. That page is shown below. Click on it for the full size image.

The problem is so deeply systemic the model has astonishing complexity. When released in late 2009 the model was widely derided as an example of foolish analysis. But that was the opinion of those who could not think systemically. Those who could found plenty of value in the model. It's insights and way of thinking were successfully used to reduce the severity of the Afghanistan Stability problem. If further analysis and solution efforts are allowed to continue, the problem is probably solvable.

That's what systems thinking is all about. However, the popular definition of systems thinking is thinking of the system as a whole when solving a problem. A better definition is thinking of the structure of the system when solving a problem. That's closer to the original definition of the term, which was:

Systems Thinking is the art and science of making reliable inferences about behavior by developing an increasingly deep understanding of underlying structure.

Thus another term for systems thinking is structural thinking. But that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily.

Are you as concerned as we are about the rise of populust authoritarians like Donald Trump? Have you noticed that democracy is unable to solve important problems like climate change, war, and poverty? If so this film series is for you!

Why is democracy in crisis? One intermediate cause is a weakened Voter Feedback Loop. Powerful root cause forces are working to weaken the loop.

The most eye-opening article on the site since it was written in December 2005. More people have contacted us about this easy to read paper and the related Dueling Loops videos than anything else on the site.

Do you every wonder why the sustainability problem is so impossibly hard to solve? It's because of the phenomenon of change resistance. The system itself, and not just individual social agents, is strongly resisting change. Why this is so, its root causes, and several potential solutions are presented.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.